Nokia unveiled a revamped Nokia Maps online service last week, introducing some exciting new features and giving the whole thing a fresh new look. We've been spending some time with maps.nokia.com and getting to grips with the new features, and you can check out our thoughts – along with a range of detailed screenshots – by reading on.

Maps.nokia.com gets a new look, and all-new interactive Heat Maps

At its core, Nokia Maps – whether on the web or your Nokia mobile phone – is about two basic things: maps and directions, and in both cases it's a highly capable and comprehensive service.

But going beyond that, Nokia Maps is also about providing added value. So, while it'll happily provide you with directions right to the front door of your hotel when visiting a new city, it'll also now give you an instant snapshot of what's around you, from restaurants to entertainment options, plus key attractions you might want to visit.

We're talking about Heat Maps, the major new addition to Nokia Maps online. It's a unique way of getting a broad feel for a new area, and seeing where the highest concentration of the likes of restaurants or tourist attractions can be found.

Using the standard Maps interface, you can launch Heat Maps by hovering over the Map View tab on the top right of the map, and clicking on one of the icons below. These let you view maps by Shopping, Eat and Drink, Night Life and Local Sights.

You can get a sense of which cities are covered by Heat Maps by selecting one of the icons and then zooming out to anything wider than City view: those cities around the globe currently covered by the service will be indicated by an icon, which can be clicked on for the option to zoom in directly.

Once you're at City-level zoom, you'll be able to view the Heat Maps themselves. It really is ideal for giving you an instant snapshot of the lay of the land, and for broadly planning which parts of a new city are worth visiting.

You can zoom right in and still see things in Heat Map view until you get to Street-level zoom, at which point things change again and you can see the specific locations that make up the Heat Maps as individual entities.

Click on one – a restaurant you like the look of, say – and a small pop-up will give you key info, plus a photo if one is available, and give you the option to get directions, share via Facebook or Twitter, or get more details.

If you select this last option, a full page will open up with all the key info on the restaurant, including all contact info, reviews from other visitors, the option to post photos or a review of your own, and suggestions of alternatives in the area. A simple click of Back to Map returns you to browsing the map.

Our sole criticism is that you can't get the Heat Map view on the aerial photography map view, which would have added an extra level of versatility, but with a fresh new look and so much else on offer – including another trio of locations covered by the stunning Nokia Maps 3D service (Cape Town, Sydney and Melbourne), we can't be anything other than highly impressed by the revamped maps.nokia.com.